Wally Schumann

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Like I said, ITI cannot do this thing alone. We are working with Health and Department of Lands. In this particular question, the Department of Lands is a key department on moving this whole strategy forward. We are working with Lands on this issue. I believe they informed committee on a lot of the issues on moving forward with the regulations and stuff with that, and we will continue to work with that and be the partners with Lands, how we are going to figure this out to access more land for agriculture in the Northwest Territories.

As I said, this is a high-level strategy designed to encourage the sector to grow and move forward. There are costs to some of these action items that we see in the strategy. The department is presently working on them and calculating what those are going to cost moving forward. At present, we work with the federal government and the Growing Forward partnership with $1.2 million annually. We are trying to increase that. When we were down with our engagement with the federal government, I had a chance to meet with the Minister of Agriculture, and discuss this initiative moving forward, and I...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, the department is going to be participating in that celebration, closing the final ice road. We will be doing a screening on a documentary called "The End of an Ice Age," which will be depicting the history of the ice road and its transition to an all-season road.

As I have mentioned before in the House in one of my Minister’s statements, there are three different celebrations going forward this year. The first one will be highlighting the completion of the Tuktoyaktuk ice road, which will be held on April 21st, and then there will be the grand opening of the highway on November 15th, the official opening of the highway, and then the final event would be in the summer of July 2018, which will be another opening, focusing on marketing travellers of the region on the highway.

Mr. Speaker, mining is the NWT’s biggest industry and the engine of our economy. For decades it has created opportunities for NWT businesses, provided Northerners with good, quality jobs, and contributed significantly to government revenues.

With rich reserves of minerals still to be tapped, there is every reason to expect mining will continue to provide the same kinds of benefits, but that won’t happen without an effort on our part, and our government remains committed to supporting an industry that is not just a part of our history, but which is also a part of our future.

In January, all...

We're a small territory. Like everybody else in the Northwest Territories, if they have a complaint they either go to their MLA or go directly to the Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I don't believe I need to commit to that because I believe we have a robust system that's in place and procurement is well-documented in the Government of the Northwest Territories. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Like I said, what has taken everyone 20 years to do, we want to do it in 10 years. In particular, I want to speak about the Yukon Government. We have engaged with them. Their strategy is quite a bit ahead of us. As most people know here, they have a robust agricultural industry in the Yukon, so we have engaged with them. We are learning from their best practices and experiences, so we are drawing on a lot of that. Plus, we have also sent representatives from the department recently to the circumpolar agricultural conference that was held in Iceland, and we want to continue to build on that...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I believe the Member said, if they caught a different airline when they got to Yellowknife, going south, there would be that additional fee. The AIF would be added on. If it was First Air, say, from Simpson all the way to Edmonton, there would just be the aeronautical fee. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. As I've said in House, one tenth of 1 per cent is the increase of the cost of living. We don't believe that the phased-in approach would make any kind of difference on that. Thank you, Mr. Chair.